


When I Decide

by Etherea



Series: Morderstwo Uda [2]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Domestic Violence, Hurt Jaskier | Dandelion, Implied/Referenced Dubious Consent, M/M, POV First Person, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:15:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25049026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Etherea/pseuds/Etherea
Summary: The story of Jaskier's mildly murderous past.
Relationships: Jaskier | Dandelion/Original Male Character(s)
Series: Morderstwo Uda [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1814152
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	When I Decide

**Author's Note:**

> Companion piece to [kiss you in bites/under the tree where you dropped](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24287950) but can be read alone. Descriptions of violence but nothing graphic enough to warrant the warning. Dubcon due to issue of power imbalance.

Are you absolutely certain you wish to hear about my murderous past, my dear? I know how attractive wrath can be, your fine self being a prime example, but mine are not noble deeds, nor expertly done. 

You’re certain?

Well! If we must, let’s get on with it.

I don’t know that you’d call the first one a  _ murder _ , per se, though certainly it was by my hand he died. Whether I dither and sometimes call it an accident because I don’t want it to be murder...well, I leave it to you to judge.

I was fourteen, give or take – don’t look at me like that, Geralt; by that age you were well on your way to your medallion, by my reckoning – and at home on my family’s estate. I had been training in lute and voice from every passing journeyman, and while variety is good for a student, so is consistency. I was therefore beyond thrilled when at last one of them took up residency in our illustrious court. He was a young lad himself, barely older than I was when we first met. Maybe 20 or so? No. No, it wasn’t him who I...

My teacher - Kinsborough, was his name - was fairly competent as bards go. At the time I thought him a virtuoso, though as I reminisce he seems much less remarkable. I choose to believe that my further education in the arts has merely given me proper perspective with regard to his abject mediocrity. But he was the first of my teachers who wrote any original works of substance and the first who heard my own clumsy attempts at original compositions. 

He took it upon himself to teach me other  _ important _ things, too. Flirtations. Kisses. Caresses and…so forth. He said this was the way of it amongst artists, that an apprentice learned such things from their mentor. I didn’t know any better. None of my contemporaries had told me differently because not a single one would ever lower themselves to learning something that could possibly be considered a  _ trade.  _ Work, performed with one’s hands, which one cannot delegate, and does not scale to maximise profits? How utterly vulgar! I had yet to dabble in that particular liberal art with anyone my own age, so it wasn’t until later - at Oxenfurt - that I found out he had been taking liberties with me. There’s an issue of power there, between teacher and student as much as between our different ages, and such fraternisation is not condoned on campus. I don’t know if he ever faced consequences for it, nor if he continued to do it to others. I’d ask if I saw him again. And I might bloody well make him my fourth, if the answer was yes.

Anyway, it was during one of his… _ less orthodox  _ lessons that a peer of mine intruded on us. Otto of Nash. I never had the chance to ask if him discovering us was accidental, or if he was just finding a new way in which to express his cruelty and pestilence. His father was an important figure in the orchid and crocus trade, and gods know he could have been more selective about which sprout he let grow to maturity. Otto was the type to goad you into a fight and take a dive the first time you struck him. I fell for it more than once. I must say, though, every time I belted, him felt almost good enough to make up for the thrashing my father dealt me after. 

I’m not sure what things were like in Rivia, but in Lettenhove they do  _ not _ go in for fella on fella action. Otto burst in, Kinsborough with his tongue down my throat and hand in my hose, and immediately began crowing about how this would give them the upper hand in trade negotiations. I don’t believe his father would have used the information as a threat, but my father would have perceived it as such. One mustn’t show weakness to one’s rivals, and everyone who isn’t family is rival. 

I chased Otto down the hallway, begging him not to say anything. Caught up to him at the top of the stairs. Fought, insomuch as I could with my breeches still half-unlaced. I’m sure you can see where this is going. One foot wrong, a backwards tumble down a staircase, his skull hitting one riser with the kind of crack that sounds wrong coming from a human body. And he landed like a body. You know how people, when they fall, they throw out an arm, try to protect themselves? None of that. That first blow killed him, I think. When he landed, he was as dead as a cow on her way out of the slaughterhouse, and as graceful.

I got Kinsborough out of the manse first. I know I seem flighty - and there’s no need for you to look at me like that, I know how I come across - but come a crisis, I grab for the first task I find. And I knew what would happen if we were discovered too soon and my father, astute man that he is, figured out what had happened, and how, and to whom.    
  
So I told him to grab his lute and go, and he did. Couldn’t look at me on his way out. As though  _ I  _ was the shameful one. As though he wasn’t doing awful things all on his own. When I went back and saw Otto...Otto’s body, that is...that’s when I vomited. Spectacularly, because we’d had cherry pastries and tea in between that day’s music and molestation. All over the marble of the landing. Quite a striking colour story, really.

You’ve not seen true rage until you’ve seen a noble thwarted. And oh, was my father angry. Not over the death of a child -the heir of an ally at that! - nor the sudden disappearance of a paid member of staff. No, it was over the ruin of a long-held and sorely disputed trade alliance. He lost a fortune that day. Not that he’d have noticed, he’s taken fortunes from everyone who’s ever done a deal with him. He doesn’t count his coin or his wins, but oh does he tally the losses! Lord Nash immediately transferred his saffron trade to a neighbouring duchy. He didn’t seem too cut up about the loss of a child, considering. It’s all numbers to them, and he had spares to take on the title.  _ Spare _ s, they call them. Have ye an heir, then try for a spare!    
  


I always said, if the gods have any mercy they will devise an afterlife in which to hold men like my father after their deaths. Nature abhors waste, but his is not a soul I want to see reborn in any form. 

  
Now, I know you know the expression ‘getting the shit kicked out of you.’ I’ve seen you threaten and deliver thereupon. This was the night I learned it is not just an expression. I was summoned first to the reception hall for the public admonishments. Son of the host, son of the guest, duties and obligations betwixt, there was a whole list of violated protocol that demanded formal recognition. Tiresome, and pointless. All the more underwhelming to me, knowing I still had to face my father in private.

And that evening, in his chambers, Father proceeded to beat the literal shit out of me. He left my face alone, because even in his deepest rage he could not abide the appearance of anything untoward in his house. He shouted the whole time about what shame I brought him, that he’d known all along what Kinsborough had been doing, and that I’d have done better to kill  _ him,  _ or myself. I was well beyond thinking tears would stop him, but I cried at that anyway. He didn’t even give a shit that I’d killed someone, or what that might be doing to me. He just cared that, from a business perspective, I’d killed the  _ wrong _ person.

I don’t think it was fear that did me in, at the end. I think it was just that thing a human body does when it thinks it’s about to die. Dump weight so it can try to make a run for it. If so, it did not succeed, for at that point I could not have walked a step for all the coin on the Continent. He continued to kick until Mother stopped him. She’d seen her share of his attentions, and unlike her I hadn’t made the choice to live in his house. So she distracted him, changed my shitty breeches, wiped my arse one last time, and sent me off to Oxenfurt the minute I was well enough to ride. Probably saved my life. Nothing I have heard about my father in the years since makes me think he has softened one iota.    
  
Beating someone who can’t fight back has been a bit of a sore point for me since then. Yes, even if the someone is a Witcher. I know you think it’s silly, that I needn’t defend you, but I can’t. I can’t stand by and watch a beating happen and not say something. Often it’s a joke to turn the crowd against a bully. Sometimes it’s a distraction so you can headbutt an elf maiden. And very occasionally, it seems, it is murder. 

**Author's Note:**

> By popular demand, I present: Jaskier's Other Kills!
> 
> Nash is a Middle English surname meaning Dweller By The Ash Tree, because I couldn’t find one that meant Saffron Merchant!
> 
> Working title: The Fantabulous Emancipation Of Julian Alfred Pankratz.
> 
> Titles from [When I Decide](https://youtu.be/0m4QE-KvuNU) by My Terrible Friend


End file.
